It is with great pleasure that we invite you to attend the 2018 Rerum Novarum Oration, Widening the Door of Hope: A Response to the Victorian Assisted Dying Legislation on Tuesday 20 November 2018 at 7pm. The orators are Associate Professor Natasha Michael and Dr Stephen Parnis. Download flyer with full details, here.

Inspired by the Australian Catholic Church’s Year of Youth, the focus of Prison Sunday on 11 November will be youth justice and juvenile detention. Prison Sunday commenced in 2016, during the Year of Mercy, as an initiative of Pope Francis to observe the Jubilee for Prisoners. Bishop Terry Brady, Bishops’ Delegate to the Australian Catholic Prisoners Pastoral Care Council and chair of the Bishops Commission for Pastoral Life, said youth detention systems in some Australian states and territories were under significant stress, leaving vulnerable young people without the services they need to turn their lives around.

Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand’s latest research Outside Systems Control My Life: The experience of single mothers on Welfare to Work was released at the recent 2018 Australian Council Of Social Services National Conference. The report finds that the Welfare to Work policy is not only failing to help single mothers find employment, it is increasing their financial insecurity and eroding their attempts to find work and become self-reliant.

Many women coming to court to get intervention orders against a violent partner have no alternative but to bring their children along, according to a new report released by Ms Felicity Broughton, Deputy Chief Magistrate on behalf of RMIT’s Centre for Innovative Justice (CIJ) and McAuley Community Services for Women.